


People Watching

by bridgetlikesto_write



Category: creative writing - Fandom
Genre: F/F, Femme, Fiction, Lesbian, Panera, Rejection, Short Story, Writing Prompt, creative writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 08:17:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11551206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bridgetlikesto_write/pseuds/bridgetlikesto_write
Summary: she's nervous to see the blonde, everyone can tell. what no one else in the panera realizes is the consequences she will be reprimanded with just for having feelings





	People Watching

People Watching  
No one was looking at the girl alone at the two person table at Panera. No one noticed her uncomfortable shifting, her nervous coughing, how she kept rubbing her neck, no one even noticed she was basically shaking the entire establishment with her leg bouncing. She looked at her uneaten bagel but took a shot of water instead. She took out her phone and began writing in her notes.  
“Pull yourself together!!!!!!!! This is going to happen, this IS happening. It's happening right now,” she wrote and put her phone back in her pocket.  
No one in the crowded restaurant noticed how she kept rubbing her hands along her jean pockets and would stick her hands to feel the small amount of space. She wasn't used to jeans, she liked loose clothing like dresses or skirts. If she had to wear pants, she would wear men's khakis or other androgynous style clothing  
Today, she wore jeans because a friend had always sent her and her other friends picture of girls who were usually wearing jeans and would put heart eyed emojis with the messages. Today she needed to impress that friend so she wore jeans, a black shirt that spelled out “RESIST” in red, and put her hair half up very lazily.  
“Holly?” a cute blonde called out by the cashier. She was happy she was wearing black, now her stress-sweat induced stains might be less visible.  
“Over here,” she called from the table. When the blonde got close to her, she stood up for a hug.  
“I love your outfit!” the blonde said.  
“Oh, thanks,” she said and nervously placed a random strand of hair behind her ear.  
“So what's up?” the blonde asked sitting down.  
“I was in the mood for a bagel and wanted to see if you were, too,” she said, in a somewhat defensive tone.  
“I mean in general,” the blonde laughed. “I heard you were asking some of our class out to lunch to practice adult friendships, I know why you asked me.”  
She started rubbing her throat again as if she was massaging her words out. “Oh, well nothing. I applied for this job but they haven't called me or anything even though I've called to check in. They say that they'll get to it, but I'm pretty sure I won't get the job.”  
“Of course you will!” the blonde said. “You're great!”  
“Maybe, but that didn't come up in the resumé,” she said.  
The blonde giggled and asked “are you sick?”  
“No, do I look-”  
“Oh no, it's your voice,” the blonde interrupted. “It sounds--I don't know, just different.”  
“Riley!” an employee shouted from behind the counter.  
“Just a sec’,” the blonde said excusing herself.  
She put her hands over her face soon as the blonde was out of sight. “Just do it,” she whispered to herself.  
The blonde sat back in her seat and put a fork filled with salad in her mouth. “Are you sure you were in the mood for a bagel?” the blonde asked. “You haven’t eaten a bite.”  
“I’m not as hungry as I thought I was,” she said. “So how is your job?”  
When she asked the question far from the topic she wanted to talk about, her face became tense as if it spelled out “dammit.”  
“Fun!” the blonde said. “Especially since I quit!”  
“You quit?” she gasped.  
“I had to! I was eating so much ice cream, I gained ten pounds minimum! Have you ever seen me eat a salad?” she joked taking another bite.  
She snorted out her water with laughter and they both began to laugh. They both wanted to laugh hysterically, but stifled their urge with their food. If it wasn’t the lunch rush, everyone would have noticed. She would pound her fist on the table as the blonde would try to hush her, but they did in fact successfully stifle their laughter so that not many people noticed.  
“Besides, I’m moving five hundred miles away,” the blonde said when she finally calmed down. The blonde noticed her friends head fall and her expression became kind of disturbed. “Hey, what’s wrong?”  
“I don’t want to say,” she said. She actually said those words to get some motivation to reveal what she was hiding. No one had been motivating her since she did not tell anyone she was going to see the blonde, she didn’t want to be talked out of it.  
“Why not? You can tell me anything, I’ve told you everything there is to know about me!” the blonde said softly with her eyelids lowering.  
“Everyone’s moving, it’s just going to be me and Jack around here,” she said. “Then, me, or Jack, will move away and I’ll make new friends and refer to all the people I’m totally in love with as ‘my friends from high school’ and it's inevitable but it’s what’s going to happen,” she continued and began slumping in her chair.  
“That won’t happen with us,” the blonde leaned forward and grabbed her friend’s hands and smiled. The blonde's smile turned to a frown when her friend jerked her hands away and crossed them under her chest.  
“Easier said than done, you’ve never moved. I moved when I was 14. I had life long friends I haven’t talked to in four whole years. It’s not even like we were that busy, but you and everyone are going to college. You won’t have anytime, you barely have time now! Not to mention that I’m in your secondary friend group. We’re not that close, we're not going to last,” she said looking at the ground as if she was talking to a bug instead of a human being in front of her. When she looked at the blonde sitting in front of her, she saw a confused face that looked like it was about to cry.  
The blonde coughed to do something that wasn’t crying. “Is this why you invited me here? To tell me how I feel about you? To tell me there’s no point in our friendship?” she said with a shaking voice.  
“No. But it wasn’t to eat bagels,” she said somewhat apathetically. She bent her head down to face her untouched bagel. She mentally wished her hair wasn’t up. If it was down, it would work as a black curtain for her face and cover her shame. “I wanted to tell you--I like you. I--like-like you. Like, it might be dramatic to call it love, but it’s close. I almost love you. I’ve felt like this for a few months now. I’ve basically been in an off-and-on relationship with my imagination. You’re really cute, and pretty, and you’re so nice, and--whenever you do things like hold my hands in the middle of Panera like we’re a couple because I look upset, it’s like you’re taming a storm at sea. I know that’s stupid and overly metaphorical but I swear that’s what happens. And it hurts because I know you barely like me as a friend but I know I’ll never see you again so I figured I’d let you in on this widely known secret. I almost really, really, really, love you, Riley,” she said with tears hitting a napkin on the table. The bagel said nothing. She looked up to see if anyone might have a reaction, and the blonde did. Her fingers were on the corners of her eyes trying to control her tears.  
“Holly,” the blonde shook. “I’m so sorry, I-”  
“No,” she interrupted abruptly, “I am. I never wanted to tell you. I knew it’d ruin our friendship. But distance is about to so I figured ‘why not’ but I didn’t think you would-”  
“Upset me?” the blonde angrily interrupted. “Holly, I care about you, nonetheless. But you think that you’re so different and unique and no one will understand you. But if you just told me...” the blonde paused and her friend’s hope dangerously, “you could have just gotten over me so much quicker.”  
“I know,” she slumped back in her seat. “I wanted to, but I didn’t want to ruin anything between us.”  
“There wasn’t that much between us anyway,” the blonde said. “I just don’t like seeing you so upset.”  
They sat in silence. A few people had noticed that the tension in the room had risen, but they all went back to eating. A few others heard angry words, but didn’t want to be rude and look, so they forgot. Now, no one noticed the two girls sitting in silence hoping for some miracle to alleviate the awkwardness between them.  
The blonde made a sound and her friend sat straight to see what she might say. The sound was her sniffling into her napkin and clearing her face of all evidence of tears.  
“I think I’m going to go,” the blonde said. She took her purse and left.  
No one noticed her. The girl sitting at a two person table, with two meals (one uneaten and one half eaten), and two chair, but one girl. One heart-broken girl.


End file.
